Roger Black on the Newspaper Disease:
What is needed is a fundamental restructuring of the newspaper business. And it has gotten too late to expect the inmates to redesign the asylum. It's going to have to be done by the proprietors. Willful, single-minded, near-genius proprietors like the ones who built the business.The whole rant is a great read. Roger Black rocks it. But it is too late?
... Newspapers have about a year to get rid of all the people who can't pull their own weight and to redeploy all the smart energetic journalists who can find the great stories and push them out to print, web and video. Some papers still have lots of talent, but they must push it to the front so readers can find it and find that they like it. Papers who continue to bury the smart people (or have already driven them away) will not make the cut. With the current recession, if newspapers don't move quickly, the market will crush them.
Barry Diller on media consolidation:
-- Forbes "Landscape of Giants," May 8, 2008
"The conglomerates are like the Rothschilds funding both sides in the Napoleonic wars, They are on both sides of virtually every transaction."
-- Forbes "Landscape of Giants," May 8, 2008
Eric Berlin:
Mark Cuban quoting (I think) Craig Moffett of Bernstein Research:
We've got the video business model figured out, right?
Here's what we know: people are online, they watch video online, they spend money online. Therefore, video producers and advertisers are going into overdrive to figure out a model that works.
Mark Cuban quoting (I think) Craig Moffett of Bernstein Research:
Ironically, we are headed down the same self-destructive road for other kinds of traditional media,as well. Five years into the video-over-the-Internet revolution, we have learned two things. First; consumers won't pay for content on the web, so it will have to be ad supported. And second; it won't be ad supported.
We've got the video business model figured out, right?
Something very similar to this breaking Twitter news happened to me on April 18 with this story.
(via InfoDiva)
(via InfoDiva)
David Cohn does a video interview with Scott Karp, who he calls "one freakin' smart guy," on Publish2, Link Journalism and more. It's a good overview of what Karp is doing with Publish2.
I'm thinking not many people know Instapundit.com has a Twitter feed. Those are "InstyTweets?" It'll be popular!
On a completely unrelated, but geographically close topic, I created a Twitter feed for University of Tennessee fans with GoVolsXtra headlines. Follow it here.
On a completely unrelated, but geographically close topic, I created a Twitter feed for University of Tennessee fans with GoVolsXtra headlines. Follow it here.
Just one of things that is interesting about Twitter is how many services have been built upon its simple interface to provide additional features. For a service that has yet to hit mainstream, it's germinated a whole eco-system of apps.Here's some of the Twitter tools I like best.
I don't bother with desktop apps or Firefox plugins, but these I find useful.
TwitterLocal, see what folks around the Hood are saying.
TweetScan, search keywords. Or search you user name and see what others have said about you that you might have missed.
TweetStats, all kinds of stats about your Twitter use. I Tweet most often on Saturdays and at 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. I talk to @Newscoma a lot.
Summize, another great Twitter searching tool.
Twitterholic, if you need Twitter "friends" to follow.
Twist, Compare keywords. Here's "big brown and belles."
TwitterFeed, great RSS to Twitter app.
Who Should I follow?, an interesting one to find new friends on Twitter.
Do you have "must haves?"
Here some more best of Twitter tools blog posts:
CyTRAP Labs' choice - free tools - 12 best Twitter tools
40+ Twitter Tools for Extended Twitter Experience from To the PC
The Clever Sheep: How Many Twitter Tools Are There?
Charles Arthur: Your suggestions please for the 20 best Twitter tools
Oh, yeah, follow me here.
Erica Smith has published her April newspaper Twitter stats. I love that she is doing this project!
Her stats show several newspapers had followings that grew by triple digits in the last month while @knoxnews grew by 47 percent and @Bonnaroo, which she started following mid-month, grew by about 7 percent.
Smith is tracking 141 newspaper Twitter accounts.
I'm thinking that the knoxnews growth of 47 percent shows another surge in popularity in the not-yet-mainstream service at least in the KnoxVegas area since we did no promotion of it. (The last time we mentioned it to marketing, they got the idea to change the background to coffin gray ... industry symbolism?).
So if you're on Twitter, follow:
@knoxnews
@Bonnarroo
... and even me.
The knoxnews site is not at the top of the list in number of Tweets, which is good!.
Her stats show several newspapers had followings that grew by triple digits in the last month while @knoxnews grew by 47 percent and @Bonnaroo, which she started following mid-month, grew by about 7 percent.
Smith is tracking 141 newspaper Twitter accounts.
I'm thinking that the knoxnews growth of 47 percent shows another surge in popularity in the not-yet-mainstream service at least in the KnoxVegas area since we did no promotion of it. (The last time we mentioned it to marketing, they got the idea to change the background to coffin gray ... industry symbolism?).
So if you're on Twitter, follow:
@knoxnews
@Bonnarroo
... and even me.
The knoxnews site is not at the top of the list in number of Tweets, which is good!.
In the quest for audience, we live by what marketing whiz Seth Godin calls "silly traffic."
One time visitors who hit a site for a few seconds and are gone. This site, for example, has a high number of them.
The Google Analytics average for the last month is a bounce rate of 79.26 percent and average time on the site of 40 seconds.
Godin says that's not where publishers should be focused:
It takes a goodly amount of silly traffic to do that. In this site's case in the last month, three-quarters are new visitors. But the number of returning visitors and the number of RSS subscribing is growing.
Berlin says he's a stat fiend. I'm not so much for just enjoying numbers and charts, but I do believe in severely overweighting credence to what people do than what they say they do, and web stats may be the best watching tool ever invented.
As Berlin says, it starts with great content, it continues with marketing (inbound links being but one form), but it also has to include learning and appreciating what the community of focused readers or users find engaging about the site.
Compared to the 40 second average visit on this site, returning visitors over the last month have stayed a minute and 43 seconds per visit. That's a huge difference.. Godin says the goal is build the number of readers who return and linger; not those who bounce in and out.
What those loyal users/readers are focusing on can sometimes surprise you. And that's why you, too, should be a stat fiend.
A couple more resources:
Avinash Kaushik: Standard Metrics Revisited: #3: Bounce Rate
Joshua J. Steimle: What's an Average or Typical Bounce Rate?
One time visitors who hit a site for a few seconds and are gone. This site, for example, has a high number of them.
The Google Analytics average for the last month is a bounce rate of 79.26 percent and average time on the site of 40 seconds.
Godin says that's not where publishers should be focused:
I think it's more productive to worry about two other things instead.Eric Berlin picks up on that thread and offers some advice on building a focus audience.
1. Engage your existing users far more deeply. Increase their participation, their devotion, their interconnection and their value.
2. Turn those existing users into ambassadors, charged with the idea of bring you traffic that is focused, traffic with intent.
I suppose the simple and not terribly magical answer is to write great content consistently, network with publishers and influential types who write similar kinds of content (and read and engage on their sites), and then hope to get linked.Part of a strategy around focused audience is generating high return visits and part of it is finding new visitors who will become part of the community of focused audience.
It takes a goodly amount of silly traffic to do that. In this site's case in the last month, three-quarters are new visitors. But the number of returning visitors and the number of RSS subscribing is growing.
Berlin says he's a stat fiend. I'm not so much for just enjoying numbers and charts, but I do believe in severely overweighting credence to what people do than what they say they do, and web stats may be the best watching tool ever invented.
As Berlin says, it starts with great content, it continues with marketing (inbound links being but one form), but it also has to include learning and appreciating what the community of focused readers or users find engaging about the site.
Compared to the 40 second average visit on this site, returning visitors over the last month have stayed a minute and 43 seconds per visit. That's a huge difference.. Godin says the goal is build the number of readers who return and linger; not those who bounce in and out.
What those loyal users/readers are focusing on can sometimes surprise you. And that's why you, too, should be a stat fiend.
A couple more resources:
Avinash Kaushik: Standard Metrics Revisited: #3: Bounce Rate
Joshua J. Steimle: What's an Average or Typical Bounce Rate?
